


shoot him through the heart with a loaded pistol

by callunavulgari



Series: The Drunken Whaler [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Attempted Murder, Dark, F/F, F/M, Hallucinations, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Mental Instability, Mildly Dubious Consent, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Rough Sex, Sibling Incest, Temporary Character Death, Violence, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-11
Updated: 2013-06-11
Packaged: 2017-12-14 15:13:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/838339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You’ve been fucked up for a long time, probably since before your sister even disappeared, but now you can’t pretend you’re okay—not when there’s a figment of your imagination keeping you company, whispering sweet nothings to you in your sister’s bed so you don’t go even crazier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	shoot him through the heart with a loaded pistol

**Author's Note:**

> So, NatCat5 made a comment on 'and up she rises' about how she kind of wanted to see what was going on with Dirk while Roxy was off being wooed by a crazy mermaid queen and uh, it hit me right in the plotbunnies. So! This is a companion piece to 'and up she rises' to get Dirk's side of the story and uh, turns out he almost had it worse than Roxy. I'll leave it up to you, but writing this felt way darker than the first one. Make sure to heed the warnings. Title is from the same song as the title for 'and up she rises', [The Drunken Whaler.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVlVyi9rKDo) Oh! And obviously part of Gamzee's dialogue later in the fic is taken from Homestuck itself.

Roxy tells you that the two of you can’t be the last of your kind—that the age of the humans is far from over—that you are two lonely kids living in a crappy fortress, but that you can’t—you _can’t_ —be the last.  
  
You’ve never been able to allow yourself to believe her. Believing her tremulous words would mean hope, and you’re fresh out of that. Have been since you were five years old and found the note that your _father_ left you, written in red ink and so full of scribbled out sentences that you hadn’t been able to really grasp what he’d said until you were seven.  
  
You’d gotten the gist of it though. That you were alone. That he and your mother were sorry. That they’d left you what they could before the sea had taken them.  
  
(You hadn’t known what that had meant at the time. Even at five you weren’t stupid enough to venture out to the roof. You couldn’t know about the waters that surrounded you, the truth to the salt taste in the air. You’d only known that they were dead and there was nothing you or your sister could do about it.)  
  
“How are we here then?” she asks you, her voice shrill with fear and desperation. It isn’t a good day. It’s a lonely life, being the last two kids in the world, and your sister is just starting to understand that truth. “What is all this, if we were the last?” she shrieks, gesturing around the two of you—at the paintings on the walls, the books your mother left, and the weapons littering the floor.  
  
You attempt to comfort her and are absolutely disgusted with yourself when you fail, your entire being flinching away from the heat of her.  
  
“We had parents,” she whispers, moving into your touch in spite of your awkwardness.  
  
You bite your tongue and shrug. “We did,” you say, simple enough. It’s a fact—basic biology. Can’t have the two of you without a sperm and egg donor. You swallow, your throat suddenly dry. “And before us, they were the last.”  
  
She presses closer to you, the first desperate sob wrenched out of her small body like it’s choking her.  
  
You are twelve years old and you know the truth. A week and a half ago, you worked up the courage to open the door out onto the roof. You’ve seen the world you live in.  
  
You know that the two of you are alone.  
  
.  
  
You have a dim, hazy memory in the back of your brain—so dark and fuzzy that you aren’t sure if it’s just a dream or if it really happened.  
  
It’s the smell that gets you most of the time, the coppery smell of blood and sweat mixed with roses and steel. It isn’t the hazy outline of their faces—a wan smile that’s little more than a quirk of the lips and a pair of red eyes in the dark; nor is it the quiet, haunting notes of the last lullaby your mother ever sung to the two of you—that’s not what sticks with you. It’s the smell of blood, your mother’s perfume, and your father’s swords that makes you realize that the dream isn’t really a dream.  
  
You dream of the last night that your parents were alive at least once a week—and you don’t need to be able to remember their injuries to know they were dying.  
  
All you have to do is remember the smell.  
  
.  
  
Your days are quiet, uneventful. You tinker with the robotics that your father left you, the smell of heat and burnt wires in your nostrils. You haven’t touched the generator that powers your house since you first saw it, the behemoth of a contraption that takes up most of your basement. You do wonder sometimes just how long it will run. How many more years will you have light at the flick of a switch, a means to cook food at the turn of a dial? How long do you have until the water filter stops working and all you have is salt and rainwater? How long do the two of you really have?  
  
You taught yourself how to read when you were three, and think that if your parents had been alive, your mother would have called you bright.  
  
It was a slow going thing, you and Roxy crouched over your mother’s books as you tried to decipher the scribbles. Back then, before you’d discovered the radio that played endless documentaries on loop, you’d communicated with gestures, a look, a touch.  
  
You think sometimes it would have been easier if you’d stayed mute and illiterate. Knowledge is a rope to hang yourself with and you strung yourself up and jumped with a proud smile on your face.  
  
You taught yourselves how to cook when you were old enough to realize that the protein bars weren’t the only thing available to you—you planted seeds in a garden and watched them grow, learned how best to cook them once you tired of the taste of them raw.  
  
The two of you taught each other how to fight, poring over illustrated books ranging from martial arts to fencing.  
  
You went through a brief phase where you were as obsessed with samurai as Roxy was with snipers—years where you read and reread Sun Tzu until you knew the _Art of War_ like you knew the back of your hand. The obsession had faded, but by then the katana was like an extension of yourself, so much better than all the broadswords, the daggers, and the sickles in the house.  
  
When you discover the roof, you start practicing up there by yourself, distancing yourself from your sister because you’re an asshole at heart and as much as you hate yourself for it, you like the silence up there, where it’s just you and the crash of the waves far below.  
  
It doesn’t last of course. The first time you see the monsters, you nearly shit yourself, but you even grow accustomed to the sight of them after awhile. You know well enough to get your ass inside before the dragons show up, to avoid the overgrown pigeons for fear of bird poop and potential evisceration, and well, it’s not like the sea monsters can reach you on the roof.  
  
Eventually, you show Roxy. You watch her drink up the ocean with her eyes—see the fear there when she startles back at her first glimpse of the weird kracken dudes.  
  
After, she joins you more often. At first, it grates—having to share _your_ sacred place with her. But it isn’t so bad, different than sharing the silence of the house with her. It’s... comfortable, you guess, and it’s not like she joins you every time.  
  
She doesn’t fuck up your routine so bad and it alleviates some of the guilt that you feel for leaving her down there alone so often with just herself, her booze, and the choking silence.  
  
.  
  
You are sixteen years old when your sister first kisses you.  
  
It isn’t quite unexpected, but you’re surprised at how much the touch of her lips repulses you inside. You know she’s thought of this before—hell, it’s hard not to when you’re the only humans left. Repopulate the earth is the main plotline of every post-apocalyptic book in your entire library, but none of them can tell you what to do when the idea of touching your supposed _mate_ feels so _wrong_.  
  
At first, you think it’s the fact that she’s your sister that bothers you.  
  
Eventually you realize your error.  
  
Your library is very well stocked, and eventually you realize what it means that you’d gotten your first erection while reading about two dudes kissing.  
  
Still, it isn’t like you can really tell her that you’re gay. The stupidity of it all—saying _sorry, I’m into dudes, sis_ when there aren’t any guys _left_ makes absolutely no sense. You make token protests of course, squirming uncomfortably with her in your lap. _We’re twins_ and _we can’t_ slips from your lips easily, even as your body traitorously reacts to her warmth.  
  
“We’re the only ones left,” she whispers, your words in her mouth, and all your protests congeal in your throat.  
  
When she kisses you again, you reluctantly kiss back, the fight going out of you.  
  
Your body responds sluggishly and even when you’ve got your dick inside her, skin humming with pleasure, it’s a struggle to keep yourself erect. It just doesn’t feel right—and you last longer than a sixteen year old virgin probably should, going at it long enough that you know after awhile you’re probably hurting her. Hell, she’s hurting you a little, almost too dry.  
  
In the end, you close your eyes and imagine yourself someone else. You invent someone the opposite of your sister in your mind—dark hair and green eyes, hard planes of muscle and dark skin instead of soft curves and the milky whiteness the both of you share. You squeeze your eyes tighter, drowning out the noises she makes, and imagine your imaginary dude smirking up at you, long fingers hooked around his own knees, pulling his legs up and out of your way as you thrust into him.  
  
You kiss him, feeling stubble against your jaw as he moans into your mouth, urging you faster— harder—  
  
“Dirk,” he purrs, eyes heavy-lidded, voice rough with arousal and so much deeper than hers—  
  
You come, body gone taut as a bowstring and a groan spilling out of your mouth.  
  
When you open your eyes she’s smiling tentatively at you, legs still wrapped around your waist, face just as streaked with tears as yours is.  
  
You close your eyes again, fighting down a whole new wave of self-revulsion.  
  
You don’t open them again until she falls asleep.  
  
Even then, you can’t look at her without feeling guilt clawing up your insides.  
  
.  
  
It gets better after the first few times, when you realize that there’s no way you’re going to be able to get off with your eyes open.  
  
After that, it’s easier to pretend—easier to go through the motions to make her happy.  
  
At first, you try imagining different guys—dudes of all shapes and sizes—pale dudes with wispy red hair and burly dudes that could probably break you in half. Once, you close your eyes and see a face like your own, a body nearly identical to yours except for a pair of red, red eyes and by the time you come you’re so sickened by yourself that you end up puking all over the floor.  
  
You stick to the first guy after that disaster.  
  
You make up a story for him in your head—intrepid island explorer with a stupid accent, a pair of pistols, and an endearingly crooked smile. You stop yourself from giving him a name, at least. Even that is too weird.  
  
He has thick dark hair all over his chest, arms, and legs.  
  
A bashful smile.  
  
A thick, gorgeous cock.  
  
Even inventing your perfect dream guy doesn’t stop things from being awkward—you have to keep yourself on the very surface on your fantasy and not get in too deep.  
  
The one time that you do get too into it, your sister has bruises in the shape of your hands around her hips for days, wincing when she sits down even when she hides it with a smile.  
  
It isn’t okay, probably. You’re using each other, fucking each other for all the wrong reasons, and trying not to hate yourselves too much for it.  
  
It isn’t just you, you tell yourself. She does it too, using your dick like a toy and riding you so hard that you can’t slip into your fantasy, can only see her damp curls on her shoulders and her mouth open in a moan. She apologizes after, of course, tears running down her cheeks.  
  
“It’s okay, Roxy,” you always say, fighting down the urge to apologize yourself. You never will, you think. There’s no use in making her upset about it.  
  
You love her, you know—more than anything else in the world. It’s just not the way she wants you to.  
  
.  
  
You blame yourself for not noticing when she starts to venture outside. You’re too caught up in trying to perfect a robot that will never run the way you want it too, distracting yourself from her so you don’t get the urge to tear your skin off.  
  
When you find the door open, her on the rocks outside, fear grips you like it never has before.  
  
You shout at her, your quiet facade cracked but not quite shattered as your heart tries to burst its way through your ribcage.  
  
She laughs at you. “The house is a birdcage, Dirk,” she tells you. She waves a hand at the sky and the sea; she grins. “ _This_ is freedom.”  
  
You frown at her.  
  
“This,” you whisper. “Is a death trap, and you’re taking the bait.”  
  
She glowers back at you, hazy with drink as she is, and says a lot of things, but the thing you hear loud and clear is, “I don’t need you.”  
  
She doesn’t, you realize. She can take care of herself, but—  
  
“You don’t even have a weapon with you,” you whisper, voice cracking in distress.  
  
“I’ll bring one from now on,” she assures you, taking hold of your hand. “Promise.”  
  
.  
  
She does take a weapon with her, afterwards.  
  
She even tells you when she’s going outside, a smile on her face and reassurance in her demeanor.  
  
It doesn’t matter, in the end.  
  
.  
  
You look for her for days.  
  
You scout the shorelines, wade into the shallows—even teach yourself to swim despite the fear of _knowing_ what could be lurking in the blackness.  
  
You’re expecting a corpse against the rocks, blood in the water, a tattered scarf—just something, _anything_.  
  
You tear the house apart after a week, screaming your lungs out and sobbing until your face is red and puffy. You shatter, bits and pieces of yourself unravelling without her there to hold you together. The tower is too silent without her, too empty without her spilt martini glasses and guns disassembled all over the place from when she forgot she was cleaning them.  
  
After the first month, you convince yourself that you’re going to build something to look for her—a robot or a submarine or a tracker—anything that’ll make you feel like you’re doing something.  
  
You throw yourself into it, building and scrapping so many things that your workshop can no longer contain everything. Your inventions spill out into the rest of the house bit by bit, each just as useless as the one before.  
  
You set your jaw and work harder.  
  
.  
  
By the end of the second month you’ve convinced yourself she’s dead, that you’re alone in the world and that you should really just rot here.  
  
You should have loved her more. Should have been honest with her. Shouldn’t have pushed her away. Shouldn’t have imagined a dude every time you fucked and just _told_ her what was wrong. You should have cherished every moment together instead of just waiting for an excuse to head to your workshop.  
  
You imagine her bloated corpse in the waves and retch.  
  
By the end of the third month you’ve convinced yourself that it doesn’t matter if she’s dead or not—that you owe it to her to at least find her body.  
  
(You don’t know what you’d do with it. There’s nowhere to bury her and there’s no real way for you to cremate her.  
  
You push the thought to the back of your head.  
  
One thing at a time.)  
  
.  
  
Month five dawns with the creation of something that’s half boat, half submarine.  
  
You test it, surprised when you don’t explode the moment the thing gets beneath the waves.  
  
You’re feeling hopeful right up until the point that you take it for a spin.  
  
And then a second.  
  
A third.  
  
A fourth.  
  
You broaden your search each time, farther and farther away from your tower, and still you don’t find her.  
  
The sixteenth time you go out, you do find something else though.  
  
You find land.  
  
.  
  
It isn’t smart, what you do.  
  
But you figure, you’re the last person left alive, you’re allowed to waste your life if you want to. Humanity will die with you anyway, it doesn’t much care which way it goes.  
  
So if you want to die hiking through half-flooded grasslands and traipsing across sandy, gray beaches... well, that’s entirely up to you now.  
  
.  
  
The monsters aren’t new—you’ve known they exist for years.  
  
What you hadn’t counted on were the humanoid ones.  
  
The first thing you run into is a bee three times as big as you are with a stinger as long as you are tall, fucked up eyes, and the filthiest mouth you think you’ll ever hear.  
  
Luckily for you, all it does is call you some really dirty names before fucking off who knows where. You guess the term busy as a bee had to come from somewhere.  
  
The second monster you run into is in a cave up by some mountains—a green, glowing thing that looks kind of like a slug if you squint. It bares thick fangs at you, but doesn’t seem to give a shit about you unless you try getting farther into the cave.  
  
You’re camped out near the beach, which is where you find your third thing—half in the surf, half cozied up into the sand like its waiting for something.  
  
Its... probably the weirdest fucking thing you’ve ever seen—like one of those portraits of the devil with the horns and the goat feet. You’re pretty sure that one of your mom’s books said there were creatures like that, satyrs? Something like that.  
  
Its hair is knotted up against the back of its skull, matted there with seaweed and fish bones and who knows what the fuck else. There’s something like war paint smeared across its face and its smiling vacantly into the sunset, goat feet dug into the sand.  
  
Torso up it looks human enough, even though the skin is a color somewhere between fish belly white and dirty dishwater gray.  
  
Weirder than anything else though is the way that it turns, looks you in the eye as it smiles dopily, and breathes, “What’s up, motherfucker?”  
  
.  
  
You freak out very, very quietly at first. You can’t hide—the creature’s already seen you. You could fight it, maybe, but its not really doing anything—just smiling at you weirdly, a hint of jagged fangs poking its way out of its mouth. Which, okay, that’s weird too because goats don’t have fangs and neither do humans. But whatever, you’ll worry about the teeth when they become a problem.  
  
It beckons you closer, still grinning. “Come get your sit on with me, little monkey dude, I ain't seen your kind around these parts before.”  
  
Its speech is sluggish, jaw moving slowly like its packed with molasses—voice deeper than you’d really expect but so very slow. Cautiously, you inch closer, hand still wrapped around the hilt of your katana.  
  
It notices, throwing its head back and laughing loudly.  
  
Its laughter reminds you of a hyena and there are alarm bells blaring throughout your head. _Get out, get out, get out_ , a voice shouts.  
  
“Ain’t gotta worry none ‘bout that, motherfucker,” it says between breaths of laughter. “I ain’t gonna get my murder on all up and unprovoked. Be a shame to fuck up the chillness of this here spot, all tranquil and shit. Ain’t nothin’ gonna stay peaceful once blood’s been spilled.”  
  
You ignore the voice in your head, the one that’s too male to be Roxy and too freaked out to be your father’s. Idly, you wonder if you’ve gone crazy—if your mystery boy’s got a place and a voice in your head now, because that’s what it sounds like.  
  
“Name’s Gamzee,” the thing tells you when you take a cautious seat a few feet away from it. Its still grinning at you, and up close you can see wear the rictus of its grin has worn grooves into the paint. You can smell the rank stench of it, even with the salt of the ocean all around you and with several feet between the two of you.  
  
“Dirk,” you respond quietly, drawing your katana and laying it across your lap, giving the creature a questioning look.  
  
It laughs again, but waves a careless hand at you. “Go ahead, brother, keep your sharp stick out if that’s what makes you get your relax on.”  
  
You do relax a little bit at that, a little of the tension going out of you while the creature rummages around beside it for a second. He—you think. It’s probably a he—you can’t see between its legs from your angle, but you’re pretty sure that its male from the lack of tits and the cadence of its voice.  
  
The relaxation lasts up until it (he) offers you a piece of the gored up shark that’s hidden by the rest of his body.  
  
.  
  
You don’t make camp with him—you spend a few very weird hours chilling on the beach with him, listening to him ramble on about just about everything. He’s... kind of goofy, he snorts when he laughs and makes really terrible jokes that you aren’t sure are supposed to actually be jokes.  
  
When the sun is just starting to dip behind the horizon, you get to your feet, brushing sand from your clothes and tucking your katana back into its sheath.  
  
Gamzee gives you a look somewhere smack dab in the middle of confused and put out. “Why you gettin’ your walk on, motherfucker?” he asks you, head cocked as he stands with you. The realization that he’s like three feet taller than you standing up hits like a bag of bricks.  
  
You gesture in the direction of where you’re camped. It isn’t too far from here, maybe an hour’s walk at most, and you sure as hell aren’t gonna spend the night with him watching over you. The dude’s chill, but who the fuck knows if the chillness is planning on lasting. “Gotta get back to my camp before it gets dark,” you say.  
  
Gamzee nods slowly, looking away from you to stare at the slowly setting sun. “Yeah,” he whispers quietly. “This ain’t really a good place to get your chill on once the sun’s all up and vacated the sky, I get you.”  
  
Another moment passes before he shakes his head as if to clear it, the grin returning to his face again. “Still kinda a shame though, yeah, brother? I ain’t had nobody to share my beach with in moons and moons. Think I’ll get a chance to fix my seeing orbs on you again, or are you all up and gonna vamoose?”  
  
The voice is starting up again, telling you to get the fuck out. You ignore it.  
  
“Maybe,” you say, shrugging. “I’m looking for my sister, but if I’ve got the time I can come back.” You don’t think you will, but you sure as fuck aren’t gonna tell him that. You also very carefully avoid saying that by now it’s less that you’re looking for your sister and more hoping that you might find her corpse—that she might have somehow washed up on shore.  
  
Gamzee stares at you, puzzled. “You got a sis?” he asks you. “Why you let her get her disappear on?”  
  
You bite your lip. “It’s complicated, I might tell you later.”  
  
You offer a hand to shake, but Gamzee just gives you a grin and pulls you in for a crushing hug, all nine feet of him wrapped around you. He’s cooler to the touch than you would have expected and hell of a lot stronger than you thought. Even fighting to get out of his grasp, you don’t move a goddamn inch until he lets you. He grins at you as you pull back sputtering, then leans in and presses a very, very wet kiss to your mouth.  
  
It’s sloppy, more of the silly kind of kiss that Roxy used to give you before bed when you were kids, but it’s enough for your stomach to kind of flip flop with nerves.  
  
“You better come visit again, motherfucker, you hear me? Maybe I could even get my search on with you, look for this here sis of yours.”  
  
You nod, though you doubt you’ll take him up on it. Visiting again is one thing—letting him help you search for Roxy? While he might help, you don’t trust him enough to let him near your sister and that’s all there is to it.  
  
You quirk a little smile in his direction and snap a lazy salute as you go. “It’s been chill, bro,” you call once you’re halfway down the beach.  
  
His laughter follows you all the way back to your camp.  
  
.  
  
Every night here is loud, rife with the sounds of shrieking beasts and the distant cry of hunting predators. This night is no different.  
  
Your sleep isn’t peaceful, waking up every few minutes when there’s a too loud noise near your little contraption. The sub is small, so sleep is already difficult enough with your legs pressed up against the console as the water rocks against the hull—not moving it much, of course. You’re beached right now, but there’s still water around you at high tide.  
  
You don’t dream—you don’t sleep in long enough spurts for that. The shrieks of the night beasts sounds too close tonight and it’s making you antsy.  
  
For a time, you almost wish you’d taken Gamzee up on his offer—stayed with him. You don’t trust him much, but you think he’d still have your back.  
  
Just outside, there’s a tap tap on the hull of your ship and a shriek of eerie laughter.  
  
You grit your teeth and close your eyes.  
  
.  
  
The next morning, you don’t venture too far from shore. There are caves along the waterline that you investigate, sometimes finding little more than dead starfish and horseshoe crabs in little tide pools and other times needing to be quick about drawing your sword lest you get skewered by the occasional fish person.  
  
You do find something though, even if it isn’t quite your dead sister.  
  
“Fuck off,” the boy says to you, hissing in your direction as it scuttles to the back of the cave on crab-like feet. You stare.  
  
Its less human than Gamzee was, the weird red shell-like exterior extending all the way up a very human torso. Its eyes are beady, like—well, like a crabs. Its got hair and a nose and a mouth, and it can obviously talk but its... well, its very weird.  
  
You put your hands up, knowing the sound of someone on the defensive. It clicks its pincers at you, hissing.  
  
“Sorry,” you say, slowly like when you’re trying to talk Roxy out of doing something stupid. “I’m just looking for my sister.”  
  
“Yeah, well, you can fuck right off then. She’s not here,” the thing shouts right back.  
  
You back up slowly, to the mouth of the cave, and smile when the thing stops acting quite so much like a cornered animal.  
  
“Why the fuck do you smell like sea-goat?” it demands after a second. “You sure as hell aren’t one, so why the _fuck_ do you smell like it.”  
  
You stare at it, confused, until you realize—Gamzee.  
  
“One of them invited me to chill on his beach the other day,” you say, shrugging. “Let me eat some of its shark and nearly broke my back hugging it out, that’s all.”  
  
The thing—boy, whatever—blanches, its entire face going ashen.  
  
“Why the fuck would you do that? You wanna get eaten?”  
  
You stare at the crab-dude, confused, because sure, Gamzee was creepy as fuck but he didn’t make a move to hurt you.  
  
“Nevermind,” the crab-boy says. “You’ve obviously got some kind of death wish, so get out of my cave before you bring it here.”  
  
It glares, clicking its pincers in your direction when you don’t move.  
  
You go. You know when you aren’t wanted.  
  
You’ve just made it to the shore when it calls out to you. Turning, you can just barely see it, hesitating at the mouth of its cave, seemingly nervous.  
  
“Just,” it starts. “Stay away from them at night, okay? The moon drives them even crazier, and trust me, you really don’t want to run into one when the moon is full.”  
  
Its hesitant look disappears, face hardening, and without a word, it turns back into the cave.  
  
.  
  
You aren’t being very intelligent when you stop back by Gamzee’s section of the beach. The crab-dude made you morbidly curious, and well, you share a few traits with Roxy when it comes to curiosity.  
  
He’s sitting in the surf again, goat feet tucked under him as he messes with the wet sand.  
  
When he sees you, he grins, climbing to his feet and ambling over to you, chill as can be. You find it hard to reconcile this grinning, goofy dude with the monster that made crab-dude flinch.  
  
You’re treated to another crushing hug, another wet kiss.  
  
This time, the voice in your head is silent.  
  
“What’s up, my main motherfucker?” he says, grinning and not letting you out of the circle of his arms. You blink at him and shrug.  
  
“Didn’t find her. Was in the area though, so I figured I’d pop in to say ‘sup.”  
  
He gives you a mournful look, ruffling your hair. “That’s rough, brother.”  
  
He’s got another shark this time, it’s half eaten corpse belly up in the sand—entrails spilling out. He offers you some, and like yesterday, you eat half because you don’t want to be rude and half because you’re honestly hungry. The meat is weird raw, chill and strangely textured. You wonder just how strong he really is, if he can go in the water and fuck up a shark without a weapon. You figure you probably don’t want to know.  
  
You make small talk for awhile and when the sun starts to go down, you leave, same as yesterday.  
  
That night, eerie laughter echoes on the wind, something tap tapping on the hull and you remember what crab dude said.  
  
The moon drives them crazy.  
  
You fall asleep wondering if its Gamzee out there, if he’s gonna bust into your sub and rip you to pieces.  
  
You wake up in one piece, more rested than you have been in over a fortnight, wondering how you managed to sleep through the night.  
  
.  
  
You keep visiting him, usually in the late afternoon, when your legs are tired and sore from traipsing all over the place. You’ve lost all hope of finding Roxy by now, but you keep at it, stubborn til’ the end.  
  
“You lost your sis to the sea?” Gamzee asks incredulously one day, clasping your shoulder with one huge hand as you go about trying to detangle his hair. You’ve dunked him in the ocean twice already, and all it’s really done is make it more tangled. You nod and he gives you a weird look.  
  
“Why you all up and gettin’ your search on _here_ , then?”  
  
Your shoulders slump as you pull at one knot a bit too roughly, judging by the way he curses at you. “I don’t know,” you say. “Figured she might have washed up here or something.”  
  
He grabs a hold of your hands, stilling them in his hair and regards you solemnly from inches away. Suddenly, you’re aware of just how close the two of you are. You swallow. “Motherfucker,” he whispers, breath ghosting over your lips. He smells like shark-meat and the sea; it shouldn’t be as distracting as it is. “If you lost your sis at sea, you ain’t gonna find her right quick and you sure as fuck ain’t gonna find her here.”  
  
You make a frustrated noise deep in your throat and try to yank your hands back, baring your teeth when he doesn’t let go.  
  
He laughs at you, holding you still so easily even as you fight to get loose. “Anger looks right good on you,” he chuckles as you snarl at him. “Like a baby barkbeast tryin’ to get away, brother.”  
  
His eyes are dark, darker than you’ve ever seen them, pupils huge and black as the waters of the deep. He traces the veins of your wrist with one claw, a noise like a growl rumbling up his throat. He looks at you with half-lidded eyes and purrs, “You look good enough to eat.”  
  
He kisses you—growling deep in his throat and yanking you closer him. It’s awkward enough at first—he’s too tall—you have to go up on tiptoes even with him stooped and after a moment of trying to get shit worked out, he seems to lose patience with it, getting two handfuls of your ass and hoisting you up so you can wrap your legs around his waist.  
  
You bite at his lips, vicious in a way you never were with Roxy, and all he does is laugh and bite you back.  
  
It’s wet and hot and _angry_ , your cock hard and trapped between you, you just want your clothes off—he’s got a head start because he’s always naked and you hiss at him, biting his tongue when it licks into your mouth and snarling, “Get my clothes off of me, asshole.”  
  
He grins at you, biting down on your neck and slowly easing the both of you down into the sand so you’re just straddling him, your knees around his hips. He growls when you stop kissing him, eyes flashing in the late afternoon sun, and you laugh, rolling your hips against his as you tear your shirt off.  
  
The sun feels good against your bare shoulders, but not nearly as good as the way he gets his claws hooked into them, making you hiss with a pain so good it’s almost pleasure.  
  
It’s harder, getting your pants off, and when you do manage to you have to stop him from rutting up into you the second your asshole is bared.  
  
“I need lube, jackass,” you hiss, one hand around his cock as it rubs wetly in the cleft of your ass. He glares at you and you narrow your eyes back, refusing to let up. He’s bigger than you thought he was, way bigger than you, definitely. It’s also different than yours, the texture weird and kind of wet—you wonder if that wetness would be enough, and then immediately nix that idea. Even if he’s self-lubricating for some weird fucked up monster reason, your asshole certainly isn’t.  
  
He huffs an annoyed breath and pushes you off of him, your back landing in the sand as he disappears into the cave nearby. It’s... weird, being alone on a beach with your cock in the air—makes you kind of paranoid, like some other monster’s going to spring out of the bushes and try to bite off your dick.  
  
You don’t have too long to worry about it, because he comes out of the cave moments later, dick jutting out from between his legs and a jar of something in his hands.  
  
  
He’s on you again before you can even try to sit up, biting down your chest and worrying at your nipple as he unscrews the jar of whatever the hell it is.  
  
“I probably don’t wanna know what that is, do I?” you pant, as he smears the weird smelling stuff against your asshole. He gives you a look that means, no, no, you probably do not want to know what he’s using to slick your pipes.  
  
You’re hoping it’s cooking grease or something and not like... the fat of his kills. You don’t press any further, mostly because he’s sliding one long finger into you, and whatever the fuck it is, it’s doing it’s job.  
  
You groan, arching your back as he slides a second finger in. You’ve done this to yourself before, even had Roxy do it to you a few times during your more experimental nights, but it feels different like this—heat in your belly and your dick just begging to be touched.  
  
“Fuck,” you hiss as he gets a third finger inside, the stretch on the right side of painful.  
  
“Think you’re all up and ready, motherfucker?” he growls, making you glance down at him. His eyes are just as dark as before, gritting his teeth as he concentrates. “‘Cause I ain’t got a whole lotta patience, and it’s just about tried up.”  
  
“One more finger,” you pant, gasping when he twists his fingers inside of you. Sure, his fingers are big and all, but his dick is huge enough that you aren’t too keen on the idea of getting it inside of you before you’re ready, regardless of whether or not you’re into pain.  
  
He growls again, leaning down to bite viciously at the line of your throat while he works that fourth finger in, scissoring the ones that are already in you apart, stretching you from the inside.  
  
“How ‘bout now, brother?” he asks through painfully gritted teeth, almost shaking with need. “It ain’t easy to fight this back none, you understand? Fries my thinkpan up just thinkin’ about that tight little hole of yours—” he breaks off to kiss you again, moaning into your mouth and twisting his fingers inside you, pressing back so far that you gasp.  
  
“Okay, okay, okay,” you whine desperately. “Get in me already.”  
  
He makes a pleased noise against your throat, pulling his fingers out more carefully than you would have expected, and hooking his hands around the backs of your knees, pushing your legs back so far that your thighs press against your stomach, your ass completely bared.  
  
He gives you a wicked grin and purrs, “You ready for this, motherfucker?”  
  
The words are on the tip of your tongue: _yes, jesusfuck_ , and _please_ , and _fuck you, just fuck me already_ , but he doesn’t give you a chance to say any of them—just pushes in, all nice and steady and splitting you open.  
  
He’s definitely a lot bigger than you expected—bigger than his four giant, longass fingers, bigger than that huge cucumber you’d stolen from Roxy’s garden when you were seventeen—he’s almost too big, and the pain makes you gasp, your head thumping back into the sand as you try to overcome it, make the pain into pleasure.  
  
He doesn’t give you very long to get used to it—your adjustment time is the minute or so it takes him to slide all the way inside you, so fucking full you feel like you might come the fuck apart—the minute he’s all the way inside he pulls back out, too quick, and slams back into you. You gasp, the breath practically knocked out of you, arching your back as he ruts into you again and again, too much too soon.  
  
You bite your lip, trying to avoid groaning in pain and only kind of succeeding. Eventually he seems to notice that something is up, because he presses a kiss to the hollow of your throat and wraps his hand around your softened dick.  
  
He goes a fraction slower afterward, and that combined with the hand slowly pumping at your dick is enough to get you hard again, let you get used to the feel of his dick inside you enough for it to start feeling good again.  
  
It still takes awhile before you’re fully hard and panting, writhing when he nips at your neck and lips.  
  
“Fuck,” you whimper when he lets go of your dick and bends you back even further, until you’re nearly bent in half. You feel like a goddamn pretzel, your hands clenching into the sand as he ruts into you—harder, faster, yes please.  
  
“That’s right, motherfucker,” he whispers between thrusts. “Gonna fill you all up til’ you’re dripping, gonna fuck you ‘til you don’t know your name no more.”  
  
Another thrust, another roll of your hips. “Come for me, brother,” he growls, biting down on the meat of your thigh.  
  
You come, back arched and thrashing in the sand, pleased when he follows behind you.  
  
He slumps over you, finally letting go of your knees so that your legs flop jelly-like into the sand on other side of him, and panting into the sweaty crook of your neck. He chuckles weakly. “Miracles, brother,” he tells you and you shift under him, sweaty and sticky and just all around uncomfortable now that the good part is over. He’s still inside you, though his dick is slowly slipping out of you, probably as it slips back into its sheath.  
  
You flick sand at him. “Yeah, that was pretty miraculous, alright,” you concede, fighting down the urge to push him off of you.  
  
You fail, shoving him off of you and just rolling your eyes when he cackles.  
  
.  
  
You fall asleep.  
  
You fall asleep because you’re a dumbshit who hasn’t quite shaken the urge to fall asleep every time you have sex. Difference is, before it was just falling asleep as Roxy snored peacefully next to you. This time you fall asleep next to the pretty chill monster dude you just let fuck you, his hands in your hair as he purrs quietly at your side.  
  
You wake up to him staring down at you, eyes slitted like a cats and a disconcerting smile on his face.  
  
It’s not like his usually dopey smiles—not one bit. This one chills you to your core, makes you remember crab-dude and his warning— _the moon drives them mad_.  
  
You glance up at the sky, the sun long having gone down, and at first you can’t find it—the sky is all cloud right now, but slowly, they shift and—  
  
Of course.  
  
Of fucking course it’s full.  
  
“Gamzee?” you ask, quiet, rubbing sleep from your eyes. His expression doesn’t change one bit, except for the slight widening of his smile. A shiver claws its way down your spine.  
  
Nervously, you chuckle, sitting up slowly and shaking sand out of your hair. You try not to move too fast—fuck, you’re naked on a beach with a monster staring at you like you’re candy, you don’t even try to get to your feet, just gauge the difference between you and your katana, which, as luck would have it, is about three feet out of your reach and closer to him than you.  
  
“What is it?” you whisper, rubbing at your eyes like you’re still tired and not snapped wide awake.  
  
“Shut up,” he says, still grinning.  
  
You blink. “What?”  
  
The grin widens even further, so wide that you think his jaw has to be popped out of place or something to accommodate that skeleton grin. “I said,” he whispers. “Shut the motherfuck up, motherfucker.”  
  
You flinch.  
  
He lets out a little cooing noise, leaning over you and stroking a hand down your cheek. “Shush little monkey, don’t need you to be makin’ no false starts over here. Can’t finish my miracle if you take yourself back out to the ocean, motherfucker.”  
  
Slowly, you reach out to touch the hand that’s still cradling your cheek. He digs his claws in, making you hiss before you can even try to move him. “I don’t understand,” you make yourself say, the portion of your brain that isn’t frozen in terror scrambling as it tries to think up a way out of this.  
  
He cackles, a high, eerie sound that makes you think of the noises you’d heard back at your sub—as if he knows what you’re thinking, he taps his claws against your temple—tap tap tap, like it had gone against the hull. You stop breathing, going completely still.  
  
“Now the motherfucker gets it,” he cackles, leaning in to place a falsely chipper kiss to the tip of your nose.  
  
“What are you doing, Gamzee?” you ask him, your belly turned to ice and your hands itching for a weapon. That makes him laugh, long and hard until he’s wheezing, his claws digging into your face until you feel the steady stream of blood. He swipes a finger through the redness and smiles dopily, bringing it up to his mouth.  
  
He sucks on the finger in a way that might have made you blush a few hours ago, making little obscene noises under his breath—noises that you recognize from before, when he had his dick buried inside of you.  
  
“Mmm,” he purrs, drawing his finger back out and smacking his lips. He beckons you to lean closer, like he’s got a secret to tell. When you refuse to do so, he gets a fistful of your hair and tugs you in, ignoring your gasps of pain and dragging you closer and closer, until you can feel his breath on your ear.  
  
“I,” he starts, breath hot on your cheek. He smells like blood and spunk and rotted meat. Your stomach twists. “Am going to motherfucking kill all you motherfuckers,” he breathes into your ear, voice sweet as a kiss, like its a syrupy declaration of love. He sighs and presses a playful, sloppy kiss to your cheek.  
  
You hold your breath and he keeps talking, lovingly stroking the skin over your jugular. “—and paint,” he purrs, “the wicked pictures with your motherfucking blood.”  
  
He trails the hand that isn’t in your hair down your chest, circling your nipple with the tip of his claw, and moving down your belly until he’s got a hand on your cock. He strokes it, gently, and you shiver.  
  
You’re soft, of course you’re soft, and you aren’t sure if it’ll be worse if you get hard or if you stay flaccid. He’s fucking crazy, you don’t know what he’s gonna take offense to.  
  
Suddenly, his grip turns just shy of painful, his voice booming loud as spittle sprays across one side of your face. “From your veins will drip my miracles,” he shouts, the rictus grin back in place and even more terrifying with his hand on your junk. “Your crushed bones will make my special stardust.”  
  
The hand in your hair twists, drawing your face closer to his until you’re nose to nose.  
  
Madness and moonlight glint off of his eyes.  
  
“Welcome to the dark carnival, brother,” he whispers, licking the blood from your cheek.  
  
.  
  
You hurt. Everything hurts. You feel like you’re falling apart inside and out as you slump into your sub, bloodied katana falling to the floor with a clatter.  
  
You set a course for home.  
  
You close your eyes.  
  
.  
  
Your house is just how you left it, which means it’s an absolute wreck—half finished projects scattered around the floor, picture frames broken, books face down, their spines snapped.  
  
You should hate yourself for it. For fucking up the only home that you and Roxy have ever had, but you’re too tired to give a shit. You give everything a cursory once over, lock the door, and trudge up the stairs.  
  
The blood on your katana has long dried, but it still feels wrong to drop it in Roxy’s bedroom, so you leave it in the hallway.  
  
Roxy’s room is the one place that hasn’t been touched since she left. It still smells like her, sheets mussed like she just slept on it yesterday, books on her side table, and a couple bottles of vodka on the floor.  
  
You collapse into her bed face-first, and try your damndest not to cry.  
  
You fail.  
  
.  
  
That night, you dream of green eyes and dark hair—of a lopsided smile and blindingly white teeth.  
  
“Hi there, I’m Jake!” the guy says, lips that you’ve seen wrapped around your cock quirked into a grin as he offers you a hand to shake.  
  
Your world tilts on its axis.  
  
“Dirk,” you offer helplessly, taking his hand.  
  
.  
  
The next few months pass with a hallucination walking around your house and sleeping with you in Roxy’s bed.  
  
Jake grins at you, his hand on your dick, her sheets all around you.  
  
“Dirk,” he whispers, and you gasp.  
  
.  
  
Your mind, you think, is splintered. You’ve been fucked up for awhile, you know that, but before, you’d had a purpose—find Roxy, explore something that wasn’t just endless ocean, make nice with the local population of monsters.  
  
You remember Gamzee’s dopey smile and a fistful of shark meat.  
  
You remember his hands around your neck, the moon so bright above you—his hands on your cock as he fucked you—the way he made you bleed, claws digging into your flesh.  
  
You remember the sun coming up over the horizon, the first touch of sunlight on your skin, and how the rictus wide grin had broken apart, his face going confused even as he spilled himself inside you.  
  
How he’d said your name, so fucking _puzzled_ , his hands as red with your blood as the rest of him.  
  
“Dirk?” he’d whispered and you’d gasped, blood gurgling in your throat, and sliced off his head.  
  
You’ve been fucked up for a long time, probably since before your sister even disappeared, but now you can’t pretend you’re okay—not when there’s a figment of your imagination keeping you company, whispering sweet nothings to you in your sister’s bed so you don’t go even crazier.  
  
.  
  
“Jake,” you breathe, kissing him as he gasps his way to orgasm.  
  
You close your eyes as your own hits when he tightens around you.  
  
When you open them again, you’re alone in her bed, spunk all over her pink sheets and sweat on the back of your neck.  
  
You're broken, so fucking shattered that you don’t know which way is up anymore.  
  
You can’t picture your sister’s face, anymore.  
  
.  
  
When she comes back to you, you aren’t prepared. You’re sitting on the couch, Jake a warm weight in your lap. He’s just starting to whisper dirty things into your ear, just starting to wriggle a little in your lap when the door bursts open and a girl who only bears a passing resemblance to your sister walks through it.  
  
You gape at her, Jake vanishing with a crooked smile.  
  
She’s naked from the waist up, gold hoops in her nipples and more jewelry clanking around her wrists, ankles, and neck. Her hair’s a tangled mess around her shoulders, gemstones and what you think might be _bones_ braided into the pale strands. Her shoulders are back, the tilt of her body almost regal, proud, and there are scars, jagged and purple criss-crossing the hollow of her throat. She looks at you, her eyes empty, and you don’t even have a chance to breathe her name before she’s turning towards the person who follows her inside.  
  
The lady is beautiful in a very amazon warrior kind of way.  
  
The first thing you notice is how fucking tall she is.  
  
The second thing you notice is the needle sharp teeth.  
  
The third are the gills.  
  
She grins at you, and the set of her mouth makes ice shoot down your spine—that’s Gamzee’s grin that she’s wearing, too wide and too deadly.  
  
You scramble for your sword.  
  
(You aren’t fast enough.)  
  
.  
  
“Two treasures are always better than one,” the fish lady is telling Roxy somewhere above you.  
  
You gurgle, blood in your throat all over again as you grope weakly for your sword.  
  
It’s _Roxy_ who kicks it away, giving you a look that might be apologetic if you knew this person who’s supposed to be your sister at all. Roxy goes up on tiptoe to kiss her when the fish girl beams at her, winding a hand into fish girl’s stupidly long hair and making noises like she’s having the time of her life. Like you aren’t bleeding out at her feet.  
  
You groan in pain, attempting to drag yourself towards your sword in spite of the puddle of blood forming around you. Your head is spinning.  
  
Jake crouches by your sword, smiling sadly, just out of reach. You think about asking him to pass you your sword, but when you open your mouth the only thing that comes out is blood. Probably for the best. Don’t want your crazy, stockholm syndrome sister knowing that you’re talking to people who don’t exist.  
  
“You’re gonna let him die first, aren’t you?” you hear Roxy ask fish girl. It’s faint, pitched so low that you can barely hear her, but fuck, you’ve been alone for months now—every word sounds like a shout.  
  
Fish girl shrugs, unapologetic. “Easier ta bring him back than heal him now.”  
  
Roxy looks at you, the faintest amount of sorrow in her eyes. You wonder what she sees when she looks at you. Does she see the shell of a person you’ve become? Or does she still see the person you used to be? You think it’s probably the former, judging by the way her lip curls.  
  
You wonder when she became the strong one.  
  
You bleed out slowly, and all the while Roxy watches you, fish girl’s arms wrapped around her from behind.  
  
You die, blood in your lungs,  _drowning_ , a hand stretched out across the floor—  
  
You don’t know who you’re reaching for, you’re too far gone for that. Roxy? Jake? Your father? Your mother? _Gamzee_? Your fucking _sword_?  
  
You don’t fucking know.  
  
You die hoping that somebody will grab your hand and heave you out of the water.  
  
.  
  
(And then you wake up.)  
  
  



End file.
